While the crazy -Il dictators of North Korea have been developing nuclear arms over the years and the world has been twisting its ears over how to stop them, why was their next door neighbor – South Korea – handing over bags full of brand new US $100 bills adding up to hundreds of millions since 2004? Essentially giving the Hermit Kingdom the cash necessary to wreak havoc on not only South Korea but the world?

Because it was great for South Korean businesses, that’s why.

North Korean slave laborers don’t complain.

In fact, they didn’t even get paid. The crisp $US money went straight to the crazy North Korean rulers and the military. The poor starving workers were given slips of paper to exchange for bits of food or goods at roughly $2 an hour.

To understand Korean business practices you’ll have to do some studying on your own. Start with “chaebols,” the uniquely Korean family business-controlled multinationals that you buy your cars from, your electronics, etc.

If you thought things were skewed in the US, you’ve never studied business practices in South Korea.

Remember that South Korean ferry that sank 2 years ago in 2014? Tragically killing about 300 Korean students on holiday? The fault of that sinking can be directly linked to corrupt chaebol business practices.

Examples of chaebol corruption go right down to the ludicrous. The chaebol daughter of the Korean airlines executive who ordered her flight back to the terminal to kick a flight attendant off the plane because she was offended when she wasn’t offered, was it a piece a candy? The return to the terminal violated international flight regulations. There was a cover-up involving the pilots, who lied to cover-up the daughter’s involvement. She was found out because of passengers. She eventually lost her job, but kept a salary. That’s the power of corrupt family chaebols in Korea.

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South Korea has always been an ally of the United States. The South Korean people are wonderful, curious, industrious and great citizens of this Green Planet. But like all the numerous examples of the US’s blundering in world affairs that ended disastrously, South Korea’s Kaesong experiment only added fuel to the nuclear fission/fusion taking place across its border.

(Yes, this is laughingly written in homage to the preponderance of “5 Takeaways” click-bait pieces all over the web.)

Lesson 1: Cam Newton/Peyton Manning

Just because someone is physically and mentally suited to a particular sport doesn’t grant them special powers to be Leaders of Men off the field.

Lesson 2: Donald Trump

Just because someone has managed to amass a fortune bullying their way through the business world doesn’t endow them with the finesse needed to lead the world’s biggest political entity.

Lesson 3: A.O. Scott/Manola Darghis

The best film reviewers act as translators, directly translating to readers all aspects of a film. The worst reviewers (Scott, Darghis) act as “feelers,” filtering films through their particular prejudices and skewing the process. (Yes, it’s tough. But look back decades for the classic film critics for guidance.)

Lesson 4: A Nation Divided Is A Nation In Doubt

No one denies the US is becoming more and more divided. We believe the media isn’t helping. In fact, we believe the media is furthering the divide. There is no spectrum of news outlets in the US. Essentially it is Fox News on the Right and CNN/MSNBC on the Left. There is no Middle Ground. To use a Buddhist term, no Middle Path.

We believe the US needs to come together on the Middle Path. How that will happen, well, we have some ideas, but, this piece is only click-bait so they’ll have to come at a later time.

So, until then…

(Oh, and we don’t have a Lesson 5. Remember, we’re being subversive. And we don’t like that click-bait format.)

In Perlez’s spin piece she tries to convince readers Mainland China had recently become a friendly Big Brother to South Korea. Then, after North Korea threatened the entire East Asian sphere by first blowing a nuclear bomb, then launching a multi-stage ballistic missile, South Korea churlishly spurned its friendly new Chinese neighbor to run back into the dangerous arms of the US.

Say, what?

We know The New York Times craves media expansion into the massive 2 billion Chinese readers behind the Great Censored Media Wall of President Xi Jinping.

But sucking the face of Mao Zedong’s Communist descendants is not only degrading but deceitful.

Oh, well. Art O. Sulzberger, the lesser, and his acolyte Dean Baquet have spread their carpet and have been busy wearing it threadbare on their knees to the Communist business forces.

Perlez manages to write over and over again how dangerous it is for South Korea’s President Park to proceed with an American missile defense system and wrangles not one but two(!) experts from – shock! – Chinese universities to back up those assertions.

Hmmm. A NYT’s writer using 2 Chinese experts to buttress her assertions that South Korea should NOT protect itself against its nuclear armed, anarchic, schizoid-led next door neighbor North Korea?

Shouldn’t this article have been shoved into a “humor” section?

Addendum: The print edition of this article included a photo describing “North Koreans in Pyongyang on Monday celebrated the rocket launch.” The photo showed the gloomiest group of sorry North Koreans you’ve ever seen. More NYT’s humor.